In both cases, I have added the ability to pass an API key, user name or password to the URL shortening service.

Simple Social Bookmarks also has new default options and user specific icons are now stored in the theme folder, rather than the plugin folder¹. If you have used either of these options, please review the instructions for potential changes that you’ll need to make.

1. this is because automatic plugin updates were removing these folders

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Thomas Mackenzie alerted us to a problem where logged in users can peek at trashed posts belonging to other authors. If you have untrusted users signed up on your blog and sensitive posts in the trash, you should upgrade to 2.9.2. As always, you can visit the Tools->Upgrade menu to upgrade.

And here are the links…

The official WordPress announcement

Change Details

A list of the modified files (between WordPress 2.9.1 and 2.9.2)

Download 2.9.2 (entire installation)

Download 2.9.2 (just the changed files between 2.9.1 and 2.9.2)

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The idea is to give back to those who provide useful, free plugins for WordPress.

What they’re asking is that anyone that has ever gotten even the slightest benefit from a WordPress plugin to say thank you today by making a small donation to the plugin/developer of your choice.

Yes, I’m one of those people, but this blog is also enhanced thanks to the plugins for others so I’ll be donating as well.

Hopefully this will make you feel as good as it does me – they deserve our gratitude.

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I’ve therefore created my own plugin to do all this and more. Simple Draft List allows you to display a list of draft post/page titles – you can specify the type (post and/or page), the sequence and maximum number to list. You can also specify individual post/pages to omit by the simple use of a character in the title.

Full details are on the official WordPress page or on the page on this site.

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The new plugin is Simple Buzz Link – this creates a URL for any post/page, allowing you to share it on the newly released Google Buzz.

Get it from the official WordPress page or read more on this site.

I’ve also updated Simple Social Bookmarks, adding Google Buzz, Yahoo! Buzz  and Yahoo! Bookmarks to the list of social bookmarking sites.

Again, get it from the WordPress page or read more on this site.

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First up, my Java book has turned up, so I intend to start learning that. Once learnt, I’ll then be ordering another book this time for how to create Android Apps using my previously learnt Java skills.

I also still have my Visual Basic book to get through as well (do you think I could do both at the same time or would that get confusing?).

I’ve recently launched an initial website for a new product named navPOInt – a SatNav POI editor for Audi/VW owners. A video is being produced of it in action, which I will then be embedding on the site. Once the software development for this is complete (which I’m not doing, I should add) I’ll then need to build a complete site, complete with instructions, forums and the usual gubbins.

I also have planned changes to make to this site and the Copy+ site.

I’m also still working on my WordPress plugins. My caching function (as used by a number of my plugins) is being completely re-written, I have some ideas for new plugins and I’m in the process of updating a number of the existing ones.

First up, though, is an update to Simple Social Bookmarks to add Google Buzz¹.

And somewhere in all of that I need to squeeze in some blogs about recommended Android Apps, a review of the most popular Android Twitter Apps and a post of recommended HTC Hero accessories.

1. which I’m underwhelmed with. Even the ability to share links on Buzz is being done via a “back door” method as Google hasn’t provided the facility to do it.

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According to WordPress…

The initial release has focused on giving you the ability to manage your blog while on the go.

Features include the ability to:

• Configure and manage multiple blogs
• Comment moderation including the ability to reply to comments
• Create and Edit Posts including categories, tags and photos
• Create and Edit Pages
• Get notified of new comments in the Android notification bar

I was using wpToGo, which had a more restricted set of abilities, but this taken over by WordPress and modified to this new plugin. I replaced it last night and, indeed, it is a much better and powerful tool, allowing me to view my posts and create new ones (amongst many other things) in a very easy fashion.

If you administer a WordPress blog, this is highly recommended.

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A Dutch gentleman named Bas de Meijer reported a couple of problems via a comment on one of my plugin pages. One I was able to resolve quite quickly and update the relevant plugin, the other was, erm, more difficult to pin down. This was related to another plugin and turned out to be due to me using a PHP command that didn’t work in PHP 4 (which he was using). As far as I know this command is the only one of this type that I’d used and it was a simple job to modify it to something else and get the compatibility. However, to actually work out what it was I had to send Bas a number of different versions of my plugin, each with more and more debug output being added.

The result was the two plugin releases announced last night – indeed, even adding Technorati to Simple Social Bookmarks was his idea. Thanks Bas. But, then again, he seemed to enjoy the experience just as much….

Thanks again for the great job you have done. Not only by designing the plugin, but also by spending a lot of time to debug it with me. It is much easier to say ‘it should work, so you must be doing something right’ or ‘well, upgrade your system’. But you really wanted to make it work. That suites you.

It was a pleasure helping you. I know from myself that I rather would solve the problem, than to switch to something else.

So come on, those who have a problem, report it, but never respond back to me – I don’t bite!

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Simple URL Shortener

8 new shortening services have been added – 2Zeus, 9mp, BudURL, HURL, kl.am, Lnk.by, to.vg and url.co.uk. Additionally, I have made a change to ensure that the plugin will work with those that are running PHP 4.

See further details on this site and download from the WordPress plugins repository.

Simple Social Bookmarks

Technorati have now been added as a social bookmark provider and email links are now encoded differently to ensure maximum email client compatibility.

See further details on this site and download from the WordPress plugins repository.

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YouTube Embed does a simple job – it displays a YouTube video directly in your posts and pages.

Now, there are lots of similar plugins available but they’re either over engineered or, in some case, under engineered with missing features and no updates for years. Indeed, frustrated with some shortcomings with the plugin that I was using, it spurred me to write this one.

You’ll notice it isn’t one of my “Simple” plugins – this is because it includes options screen and various other “advanced” plugin features. It’s the first time I’ve written an options screen before. And a widget. And indeed, many of the features in this plugin, so be gentle with me!

Features include the ability to use both short codes but also to call a PHP function (for the coders our there!). You can embed both videos and playlists. You can also display video thumbnails and even fetch short YouTube URLs (recently introduced by YouTube). There’s even a widget for adding a video or playlist to your sidebar. And, naturally, the generated code is all XHTML compliant (unlike the code that YouTube provide you with!).

Download from WordPress or visit the official page on this site.

As always, let me know what you think, and feel free to send me ideas and suggestions for future enhancements.

Quick Tip!

I was using WP YouTube before – this means all my video short codes were set to [wp_youtube]. My new one, although compatible with many other plugins, uses [youtube] as a short code. Rather than edit all the posts, I simply added the following to my functions.php file within my theme folder…

add_shortcode('wp_youtube','youtube_video_sc');

You need to disable the original plugin and activate mine. This code simply gets any instances of [wp_youtube] to point to my new function.

wp_youtube, in the above code, can be replaced with any other short code.

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